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| Immigrants waiting in Calais, to get into the UK. |
Hundreds of migrants set up new illegal camp
in French port of Calais
Squalid, tented squat on town's outskirts has
been nicknamed 'Jungle 2'
It was set up two months after previous one
in the town was bulldozed
Most
of the migrants in the camp are from Eritrea, Sudan and Ethiopia
They are desperate, defiant – and determined to get to England.
Many had scaled mountains, crossed
deserts and sailed across an ocean to get here.
Some of their companions had drowned,
perished from starvation or been arrested before they made it.
They have nicknamed it Jungle 2 – a
squalid, tented squat on the outskirts of the French port. The previous one in
the town was bulldozed two months ago.
That followed the clearance in 2009 of
the original Jungle area on the outskirts, and the razing of the notorious
Sangatte refugee centre in 2002.
All of that was meant to have put an
end to the constant, ever-growing flow of hopefuls waiting to cross the Channel
by any means possible.
All it did was to drive them to other
parts of Calais.
+5
Desperate: Two migrants try to break
into a container lorry
And so, Jungle 2 is currently a
miserable but convenient stepping-stone to the UK for more than 500 itinerants,
a population rapidly swelling with families fleeing Eritrea, Sudan and
Ethiopia.
So it is not surprising that on Friday
– despite threats of eviction, alleged beatings from police and an
international outcry by homeless charities and migrant help groups – so many
insisted they would stay for as long as it takes to get to England.
As one teenage Eritrean put it: ‘We
will get there eventually.’
The new Jungle is situated on the
seaward side of a road used by lorries heading to the port. It is a
swathe of wasteland and sand dunes, owned and used by a chemical factory to
bury supposedly non-toxic waste.
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